Wow! Yesterday morning we reached our first goal! Thank you so much for your support! We can all breath a sigh of relief, knowing that we will be able to make this game a reality!

With ten days left in our campaign, we are determined to reach the $22,000 goal! With this goal we will be able to port Axle to multiple platforms! In addition to iPhone, iPad, and Kindle Fire, we are also proud to announce that we can port to Ouya and Windows Phone 8 at the same goal!

Since I spent a good portion of last week having a blast creating levels for Axle, I’m going to take some time to talk a bit about the level editor.

Currently, we use Unity to build our levels. It helps us with the drag & drop system, previewing and other functionality we would have to build ourselves. We export a level file from Unity, which remembers where we placed all of our objects, and what they do. The game is a native Java application that runs the level file on the Android.

Obviously, we want to make this multi-platform, so we’re in the process of changing our native Android application into a Unity application. However, we’ll still be able to have a unique level file that we can load into the game, which can give players the power to create their own levels!

The level editor currently looks like this. Unity is very powerful, but there is a lot to learn.

If we can make it to $30,000, we can make a desktop Unity application that will be a streamlined level editor for Axle. This way, you do not need any experience with Unity to use it, and it will be simple and safe for kids to use and experiment with!

First of all, I just want to thank all of you for supporting us this far! Your feedback and questions have been fantastic. There are going to be some upcoming times for you to ask us questions and for us to get to know you coming up, so mark your calenders! We will provide the links the day-of.

Reddit AMA on Sunday, November 11th 11am-6pm PST. Ask us anything!

Livestream on Friday, November 16th 8pm-10pm PST. We're going to be playing some platformers like Donkey Kong Country Returns, so let us know if you have suggestions! We would love to give your favorite games a try!

Livestream on Saturday, November 17th 11am-2pm PST. We're going to be working on the game. See the magic happen!

Livestream on Sunday, November 18th 3pm-6pmPST. The final countdown! Tune and and cheer Axle on as the kickstarter finishes up!

Media & Blogs

Ian, one of our awesome backers included us in his video series! (Axle is at 3:14)

Jan Norman at the OC Register featured us in Friday's paper! We were on the very front page of the business section, and were interviewed about how we got started and how we are bootstrapping our business with the Chapman eVillage. The story also spread toMSNBC, Businessweek, and the Dodge College Blog.

The F***Yeah Electroswing blog wrote up a great (and funny) post about Axle, Kickstarter, and modern publishing. (Not Safe for Work - Language)

As a side note, if you like electro-swing check outhttp://turntable.fm/boomswing_cabaret tonight at 6pm PST/9pm EST. @...And Sushi will be showcasing their 20-track mashup album “We Can Dance”, each featuring Caravan Palace in some way or another. I highly recommend dropping in - your ears will thank you.

Level Editing!

Since I spent a good portion of last week having a blast creating levels for Axle, I’m going to take some time to talk a bit about the level editor.

Currently, we use Unity to build our levels. It helps us with the drag & drop system, previewing and other functionality we would have to build ourselves. We export a level file from Unity, which remembers where we placed all of our objects, and what they do. The game is a native Java application that runs the level file on the Android.

Obviously, we want to make this multi-platform, so we’re in the process of changing our native Android application into a Unity application. However, we’ll still be able to have a unique level file that we can load into the game, which can give players the power to create their own levels!

The level editor currently looks like this. Unity is very powerful, but there is a lot to learn.

If we can make it to $30,000, we can make a desktop Unity application that will be a streamlined level editor for Axle. This way, you do not need any experience with Unityto use it, and it will be simple and safe for kids to use and experiment with.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and have a fantastic week!

Cheers,Liz Fiacco & The Axle Team

Bonus: Here are some sneak peeks at our new levels! (As shown in the level editor)

We just want to send our thanks to the team at OC Register, our mentors at the Chapman eVillage for supporting us, and to Digital Arts and the Computer Science Departments for giving us the opportunity to work on Axle while we were still students!

In other news, we are now over $13k on our Kickstarter! Thank you for your support so far!

EDIT : The OC Register article has also been posted on MSNBCand Businessweek websites!

It is almost 3:00am and we are putting the final touches on our submission to the IGF student competition! The past few days have been a flurry of implementing new features and debugging old ones, including cutscenes, watts, moving gear track, detailed score readouts, and level progression.

A bunch of us have work in the morning, but the coffee-fueled crunch is a staple of game development, right?

Hello Backers!

Thank you for your support so far! We are 80% in only the first week of our kickstarter! We can't thank you enough for all of your support and generosity thus far!

We have busy with putting together a new version of Axle to submit to the Student IGF competition. Each big deadline like this is another opportunity to refine the game, build more features, and get feedback on what we have so far. It will be the first year we are participating, so we're excited!

For everyone who pledged $10 or more, we are going to include another bonus level in your games… if we can get 500 likes on our Facebook page! We wanted ways for you to be able to support Axle aside from just donating money. If everyone could convince one friend to like the Facebook page, then we'll easily have enough!

Since the last update we have also been featured on a couple of blogs! Noble Presshas a fantastic, detailed article about the game, and Liz was featured on the Dodge College Blog for her thoughts on making games with a film school education.

Hello Axle backers!

First and foremost, a huge thank you to everyone who has donated, shared, and checking out Axle. Our team is so excited, encouraged, and humbled by your amazingly generous response! We made it halfway to our first goal and were featured by the Kickstarter staff within the first 24 hours, and as of writing this we already have over 100 backers and $10k. We're off to a great start!

We've already been talking with a lot of you about what you would like to see for Axle. If you check out the bottom of our front page we have started up a FAQ section. In addition, we are also brainstorming ideas for digital rewards to put together some "Digital Only" tiers. Please let us know in the comment section below if there is something you would like to see!

More than anything it has been great hearing from you. We value you guys a lot and we are always open to comments, questions, conversation, and Bon Jovi song parodies. If Kickstarter isn't your dig, feel free to talk to us on Tumblr,Facebook, and Twitter.

We have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the rest of this campaign, from extra goodies for you guys, to more bits of the game as we make it. Thank you again for your support! You are amazing!

-The Axle Team

Here is a high-def image of one of the pieces we had in our Kickstarter video that we didn't get to share on our main page!

To get Axle released on Google Play and the App Store, we need to do some fundraising. Our Kickstarter Campaign is live, and we are offering some REALLY cool rewards! Go check it out, and tell your friends! If we raise enough money we'll even be able to provide a level editor, which is going to be AMAZING!

And don't just take our word for it! The guys at 8th-Curcuit are on board as well!